we drink of him as the fountain of life and are filled – until then, we are exiles, walking by faith. Until then, we hunger and thirst for justice, longing with a passion beyond words for the beauty of the form of God. Until then, let us celebrate his birth in the form of a slave with humble devotion.
3 January
A Reading from a letter of Athanasius of Alexandria
The Scriptures record that the Word ‘took to himself descent from Abraham’ and that therefore it was essential that ‘he should become completely like his brothers and sisters’, and have a body similar to our own. This explains the role of Mary in the plan of God: she was to provide the Word with a human body so that he might offer it up as something that is his own. Scripture records her giving birth, and tell us that she ‘wrapped him in swaddling-clothes’. The breasts that suckled him were called blessed. Sacrifice was offered because this child was her firstborn. The angel Gabriel announced the good news of his birth in careful and prudent language. He did not speak of ‘what will be born in you’, to avoid the impression that a body had been introduced into her womb from the outside. Rather, he said: ‘what will be born from you’, so that we might know that her child originated within her entirely naturally.
The Word adopted this pattern so that by assuming our human nature and offering it in sacrifice, he might both abolish it and invest it with his own nature. As the apostle Paul was inspired to write: ‘This corruptible body must put on incorruption; this mortal body must put on immortality.’
His birth was no pretence, as some have suggested. Far from it! Our Saviour really did become human, and from this has followed the salvation of humankind. Our salvation is no pretence, nor is it the salvation of the body only. The salvation which the Word has secured is of the whole person, body and soul.
What was born of Mary, according to Scripture, was human by nature. The Lord’s body was real – real because it was the same as ours. Mary, you see, is our sister, for we are all descended from Adam.
This is the meaning of the words of St John: ‘The Word was made flesh.’ His words have the same import as others of St Paul: ‘Christ was made a curse for our sake.’ The human body has acquired something wonderful through its communion and union with the Word. From being mortal it has become immortal; though physical, it has become spiritual; though made from the earth, it has passed through the gates of heaven.
4 January
A Reading from a sermon of Bernard of Clairvaux
When God emptied himself and took the form of a servant, he emptied himself only of majesty and power, not of goodness and mercy. For what does the Apostle say? ‘The goodness and humanity of God our Saviour have appeared in our midst.’ God’s power had appeared already in creation, and his wisdom in the ordering of creation; but his goodness and mercy have appeared now in his humanity.
So what are you frightened of? Why are you trembling before the face of the Lord when he comes? God has come not to judge the world, but to save it! Do not run away; do not be afraid. God comes unarmed; he wants to save you, not to punish you. And lest you should say ‘I heard your voice and I hid myself,’ look – he is here, an infant with no voice. The cry of a baby is something to be pitied, not to be frightened of. He is made a little child, the Virgin Mother has wrapped his tender limbs in swaddling bands; so why are you still quaking with fear? This tells you that God has come to save you, not to lose you; to rescue you, not to imprison you.
God is already fighting your two enemies, sin and death – the death of both body and soul. He has come to conquer both of them; so do not fear, he will save you from them. He has already conquered sin in his own person, in that he took our human nature upon himself without spot of sin. From this moment on he pursues your enemies and overtakes them, and will not return until he has overcome them both. He fights sin with his life, he attacks it with his word and example; and in his passion he binds it, yes, binds ‘the strong man and carries off his goods’. In the same way it is in his own person that he first conquers death when he rises as ‘the firstfruits of those who sleep, the firstborn from the dead’. From now on he will conquer it in all of us as he raises up our mortal bodies, and death, the last enemy, will be destroyed.
In his rising he is clothed with honour, no longer wrapped in swaddling bands as at his birth. At his birth, in the wide embrace of his mercy, he judged no one; but at his resurrection he ties around his waist the girdle of righteousness which in some sense must define the embrace of his mercy. Henceforth we must be ready for judgement which will take place when we ourselves are raised. Today he has come to us as a little child, that before all else he might offer all people mercy; but in his resurrection he anticipates the final judgement when mercy must needs be balanced by the claims of righteousness.
5 January
A Reading from the Catechetical Orations of Gregory of Nyssa
That God should have clothed himself with our nature is a fact that should not seem strange or extravagant to minds that do not form too paltry an idea of reality. Who, looking at the universe, would be so feeble-minded as not to believe that God is all in all; that he clothes himself with the universe, and at the same time contains it and dwells in it? What exists depends on the One who is, and nothing can exist except in the bosom of the One who is.
If then all is in God and God is in all, why be embarrassed about a faith that teaches us that one day God was born in the human condition, a God who still today exists in humanity?
Indeed, if the presence of God in us does not take the same form now as it did then, we can at least agree in recognising that he is in us today no less than he was then. Today, he is involved with us in as much as he maintains creation in existence. In Christ he mingled himself with our being to deify it by contact with him, after he had snatched it from death. For his resurrection becomes for mortals the promise of their ultimate return to immortal life.
The First Sunday of Christmas
The Holy Family
A Reading from The Light of Christ by Evelyn Underhill
The new life grows in secret. Nothing very startling happens. We see the child in the carpenter’s workshop. He does not go outside the frontiers within which he appeared. It did quite well for him and will do quite well for us. There is no need for peculiar conditions in the spiritual life. Our environment itself, our home and job, are part of the moulding action of God. Have we fully realised all that is unfolded in this ? How unchristian it is to try to get out of our frame, to separate our daily life from our prayer? That third-rate little village in the hills with its limited social contacts and monotonous manual work reproves us, when we begin to fuss about opportunities and scope. And that quality of quietness and ordinariness, that simplicity with which he entered into his great vocation, endured from the beginning to the end.
The child Jesus grows as other children, the lad works as other lads. Total abandonment to the vast divine purpose working at its own pace in and through ordinary life and often, to us, in mysterious ways. I love to think that much in Christ’s own destiny was mysterious to him. It was part of his perfect manhood that he shared our human situation in this too.
We often feel we ought to get on quickly to a new stage like spiritual mayflies. Christ takes thirty years to grow and two and a half to act. Only the strange dreams Joseph and Mary had, warned a workman and his young wife that they lay in the direct line of God’s action, that the growth committed to them mattered supremely to the world. And when his growth reached the right stage, there is the revelation of God’s call and after it, stress, discipline
